The majority of medicines and drugs require administration in a series of doses at specific times over a period of time for increased effectiveness. Outside the hospital or clinic setting, this usually requires the patient or an individual caring for the patient to be responsible for keeping track of the taking of the medication in question. A frequent problem, however, is that the patent or individual keeping track often errs in the administration of the medication. Patients may forget to take a dose of their medication, be tardy in taking a dose, or forget taking a dose and take a second dose too soon.
A number of approaches to solving this problem are found in the prior art. There are a number of devices, for example, that comprise a pill case or box with a timer or alarm to alert the patient that a certain time period has passed and that medication should be taken. These devices, however, are not suitable for many types of medication that should not be transferred from their initial container, and also may lead to problems associated with mixed medications and accumulated toxicity. In addition, these simple alarms provide no means to ensure or check compliance with administration of the medication. Furthermore, if the patient does take the medication at the proper time, the patient may fail to reset the timer or alarm.
In response to these problems, a number of devices have been developed that incorporate the timing mechanism and alarm in the cap or lid of the medication bottle or container itself. Examples of such mechanisms are found in Wirtschafter (U.S. Pat. No. 5,233,571), Albeck (U.S. Pat. No. 5,313,439), and Walters (U.S. Pat. No. 5,751,661). Several problems still are found with these devices, however, including false resetting of the timer or alarm without the medicine cap ever being removed or the medicine taken, interruption of power to the timer, breach of the medication-containing compartment, interference with child-resistant mechanisms, and delicacy of the mechanisms leading to high failure rates. An additional problem is the high cost and complex assembly of many such devices, which prohibits their wide adoption and use.
Accordingly, what is needed is an automatic timing mechanism for a medicine cap that is reliable, stable, easy to assemble and operate, low in cost, and compatible with both child-resistant and non-child-resistant medication containers.